Suicide, depression, eating disorders, and other mental health illnesses have dramatically increased among adolescents in recent decades. Our American culture demands high levels of success and propagates a "feel good" attitude that denies pain, loss, and failure. Churches contribute to these distressing realities among youth. Our theology associates "being happy" with "true faithfulness" to God, overemphasizing praise and thanksgiving while neglecting lament, even though lament comprises the largest number of Psalms. There is much good in the lives of today's adolescents, but there is also much grief and woundedness. Helping Youth Grieve exposes the warped view of God modeled and taught to our young people. This book portrays a God who yearns to hear the honest cries of our youth, even when that involves blaming God! Spiritual caregivers will discover good news in biblical lament for its role in pastoral care and faith formation of adolescents.

In this volume, Alice Crosetto and Rajinder Garcha identify hundreds of resources-including books, Internet sites, and media titles-that will help educators, professionals, parents, siblings, guardians, and students learn about coping with the loss of a loved one and the grief...

This book provides a guide for grieving youth and adults as well as extensive descriptive lists of recommended professional literature resources. Grief caused by loss is both a very common human experience and a highly individualized one. For example, children experience a number of losses that are unique to their young age—such as sibling and parent death, adoption, or divorce—and should be given special consideration by professionals and parents helping them in these situations. For gay, lesbian, or cohabiting heterosexual couples that suffer the loss of a partner, societal standards often deny the survivors in these relationships the right to grieve. Helping Those Experiencing Loss: A Guide to Grieving Resources is a book like no other, supplying compassionate information for navigating the emotional distress that every man and woman will experience in their lifetime, as well as a comprehensive guide to the literature of bereavement and grieving. It explains the grieving process, interpreting the results of research on the topic in plain language and addressing specific groups: children, young adults, parents who have lost a child, adults who have lost spouses, and the aging population.

Across the country, far too many young people age out of foster care into appalling circumstances. “Aging out” occurs when youth under the state’s custody are still in the foster care system when they reach either the age of majority or the end of extended foster care. Aging out refers to the moment in time when child welfare is no longer legally responsible for the youth, and the system abruptly stops providing services–usually when the youth turns either 18 or 21. Each year, thousands of youth age out of foster care, essentially legal orphans with no legal connection to family or a supportive network. Unfortunately, foster youth who go through the experience of aging out of foster care have statistically poor life prospects. Longitudinal studies across the country show very high rates of homelessness, incarceration, unemployment, and lack of access to health care among youth who aged out of foster care. These outcomes are disproportionately worse for Black, Native, and Brown youth, as well as queer and trans youth. This study is designed to understand the experiences of transition-age youth in their transition out of foster care and investigate: Why do poor outcomes for youth who age out of care persist? What are the current lived experiences of youth who age out of care? In what ways does child welfare continue to fall short for youth who age out of care?

This book addresses a systemic gap in existing studies on human services and youth work. While the notion of spirituality does make rare appearances in such literature, it is often vaguely defined and underdeveloped both as a concept and as a mode of practice. This ambiguity is symptomatic of the broader shift in the sociological context of Western and global societies that has been referred to variously as post-modern, late-modern and post-secular. From the perspective of the relationship between human development and the spiritual/theological, we live in a “time between times”. We have not yet worked out how to speak of “spirit”; nor how to include its meanings in positive youth intervention, and developments in our language for a public spiritual consciousness remain in a state of cultural flux. This book offers a coherent vocabulary and narrative from which to construct a more explicit and deliberate practice of spiritual care, education and professional identity for youth workers. It speaks directly to youth work practitioners, managers of youth services, those providing youth work education, and anyone with an interest in youth and spirituality research and practice.

A guide for treating trauma and bereavement that can be flexibly implemented in group and individual settings to empower adolescents.

Thoroughly researched, this easy-to-use handbook is designed to help parents, teachers, pastors and youth workers guide today's young people through the minefields of adolescence. From simple challenges to major crises, this book will equip adults to help youth cope with situations involving emotional issues, abuse, addictions, family issues, disorders, sexual issues and much more.

Though interpersonal violence is widely studied, much less has been done to understand structural violence, the often-invisible patterns of inequality that reproduce social relations of exclusion and marginalization through ideologies, policies, stigmas, and discourses attendant to gender, race, class, and other markers of social identity. Structural violence normalizes experiences like poverty, ableism, sexual harassment, racism, and colonialism, and erases their social and political origins. The legal structures that provide impunity for those who exploit youth are also part of structural violence’s machinery. Working with Indigenous, queer, immigrant and homeless youth across Canada, this five-year Youth-based Participatory Action Research project used art to explore the many ways that structural violence harms youth, destroying hope, optimism, a sense of belonging and a connection to civil society. However, recognizing that youth are not merely victims, Everyday Violence in the Lives of Youth also examines the various ways youth respond to and resist this violence to preserve their dignity, well-being and inclusion in society.

A step-by-step resource for treating more than 40 prevalent issues with proven strategies This comprehensive handbook for evidence-based mental health and learning interventions with children and adolescents is distinguished by its explicit yet concise guidance on implementation in practice. With a compendium of proven strategies for resolving more than 40 of the most pressing and prevalent issues facing young people, the book provides immediate guidance and uniform step-by-step instructions for resolving issues ranging from psychopathological disorders to academic problems. Busy academics, practitioners, and trainees in schools and outpatient clinical settings will find this resource to be an invaluable desktop reference for facilitating well-informed decision-making. Unlike other volumes that ignore or merely reference the evidence base of various interventions, this book focuses on providing immediate, empirically supported guidance for putting these strategies into direct practice. Issues covered include crisis interventions and response, social and emotional issues, academic/learning issues, psychopathological disorders, neuropsychological disorders, and the behavioral management of childhood health issues. Each chapter follows a consistent format including a brief description of the problem and associated characteristics, etiology and contributing factors, and three evidence-based, step-by-step sets of instructions for implementation. Additionally, each chapter provides several websites offering further information about the topic. Featuring contributions from leading scholars and practitioners on each issue covered, this book will be a valuable resource for child clinical and school psychologists, counselors, social workers, and therapists as well as other health and mental health professionals whose primary practice is with children and adolescents. Key Features: Demonstrates step-by-step, evidence-based interventions for more than 40 common childhood issues Provides treatment procedures that can be immediately put into practice Covers a wide range of mental health and academic/learning issues for children and adolescents Relevance for both school-based and clinically-based practice Includes contributions by noted experts in the field

Helping the Struggling Adolescent is your first resource to turn to when a teen you know is in trouble. Whether you're a youth worker, counselor, pastor, or teacher, this fast, ready reference is a compendium of insight on teen problems from abuse to violence and everything between. Help starts here for thirty-six common, critical concerns. Topics are arranged in alphabetical order. Each chapter gives you essential information for several vital questions: What does the specific struggle look like? Why did it happen? How can you help? When should you refer to another expert? Where can you find additional resources? Arranged in three sections, this book first gives you the basics of being an effective helper, then it informs you on the different struggles of adolescents. The final section--a key component of this book--supplies more than forty rapid assessment tools for use with specific problems. Helping the Struggling Adolescent organizes and condenses biblical counseling issues for teens into one extremely useful volume. Keep it in arm's reach for the answers you need, right when you need them.